Cover Story

100 BPM Exercise With Giovanni Durst

Giovanni Durst is a great young metal drummer with White Wizzard. In this lesson Table of Time lesson this Berklee grad takes you through a stick control exercise designed to get you moving up to a hundred beats a minute with greater control.

Practice Pad Groove

Stanton Moore Expands Your Groove Vocabulary

Hudson Music and Stanton Moore announced the release of Groove Alchemy, a series consisting of two products: a DVD and a book/MP3 CD, which are sold separately but can be used together for a complete educational experience. These products contain a complete method for developing a massive vocabulary of grooves in various funk-based styles, along with a historical overview of some of the key grooves in the development of funk.

Lesson Reviews

Drum Set Teachers Teaming Up

On Sunday April 11th, the Drummers Collective in New York City will team up with Hudson Music's Teacher Integration Program to present a full day of seminars, clinics and master classes tailored specifically for drumset teachers.

Tiger Bill’s Speedy Jazz Triplets #3

In this concluding segment, we're taking the exercises you practiced from the previous two lessons and applying them to the drumset. If you haven't studied parts one and two yet, please do so before working on this one.

Tiger Bill

Tiger Bill Lesson #71; Jazz Ride Speedy Fill-ins

This time we're modifying last month's accented triplet pattern and while it actually includes fewer accents, you'll find that it makes the exercise harder to play. Let's check it out.

Practice Pad Jazz

Velocities

Here’s some cool drum vocabulary that best exists in its own time and space frame; such rhythms shouldn’t be transcribed in measured time. Why? Because these are rhythmic expressions more of velocity and emotion rather than technique.

Practice Pad Metal

Double Bass Basics

In this lesson we’re going to go over some double bass basics. First off, balance and posture are very important, so your setup is key, with the throne being your anchor point.

Tiger Bill

Tiger Bill’s Speed Lesson #70

This is one of my favorite accented triplet patterns. The accents themselves form the basic jazz ride cymbal time pattern while the eighth-note fill-ins add a sense of forward movement that sounds great when applied to the drumset in jazz and other styles.

Practice Pad Fusion

Swiss Army Funk

This month’s lesson makes use of the Swiss Army triplet (sometimes known as just the Swiss triplet).

Practice Pad Metal

Slamming In Six

I’ve explored some whacky time signatures in past columns, but this month I’m going to take it back a notch with some beats in 6/4.

Practice Pad Jazz

Dynamic Swing

Phrasing involves dynamic as well as rhythmic choices.

Basic Beats: Louie Bellson

Louie Bellson is one of drumming's greatest legends. He pioneered the double bass drum set while still a teenager. In a career spanning 60 years he performed with the greatest twentieth century musicians such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald and hundreds more. He appeared on hundreds of recordings and became famed as a composer, and wrote more than a dozen drum and percussion books, including The Musical Drummer.

In Video 1 he demonstrates a basic pattern with a backbeat on 2 and 4 that works in a wide range of contemporary music. Video 2 is a treat—an absolutely killer Bellson solo. Check it out.